John Oliver Simon on Ron Silliman

In Caminante, John Oliver Simon’s sequence of poems written during a several-month travel through Latin America, Simon includes “comentarios” in prose after each poem. The comentario gives the poem context (where it was written, who was around) and explains obscurities and culturally specific references. Under the poem “Not Language”, Simon takes on Ron Silliman:

“’the lie of closure,’ writes l*a*n*g*u*a*g*e poet Ron Silliman, lying to us and to himself on every possible level. Our raw material as poets is not words but things, not syntax but lives. Mortal, we work toward an ending.”